My family immigrated to the UK from Poland when I was six. I’m 20 now, speak much better English than Polish and feel like this is my land/culture. However I have a Polish first and last name, Polish passport and “unique” accent everyone picks up on, so despite this I’m usually perceived as an outsider. It makes me really sad because I don’t “belong” in Poland anymore either. Everything seems so complicated especially as I’ve gotten older with having to get the right documentation for work and opening a bank account and etc also… Not even sure if I can vote in the next general election even though I feel like I should be able to?
I’ve had a few nasty instances of being told to go back to my own country, even had a conker thrown at my head while a boy yelled Polski at me in year 11, and tbh even just been seen as a novelty and being asked to say something in Polish has gotten really old. I guess I’m just wondering if I’ll ever truly fit in. For some context, I grew up in North England and now live in Wales
I think that the key difference is that plenty societies were built with the “immigration” mindset. It isn’t just the ones in USA, but mostly the whole New World. And even if the “bulk” of the immigration in the XIX and XX centuries is over, the mindset is still here.
As opposed to the typical society in the Old World where, if you were born somewhere, odds are that your grand-grand-grand-grandparents were also born there, like Japan and UK-minus-London.